The Republic's Colonization Program

BESIDES INCREASED TEXAN ACTIVITY on the frontier, another
development which no doubt drew Mexico's attention to Texas was the Texas
colonization program. The Indian disturbances of 1838 and 1839 had caused
a renewal of the discussion of colonizing the area beyond the frontier of
settlement. When the Indian campaign of 1839 removed the most immediate
danger to the settlements, the government turned its attention to the problem
of establishing frontier posts and promoting a colonization plan. Early in
1841 a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives providing for the
incorporation and establishment of a French colonization company to
introduce eight thousand Frenchmen, over seventeen years of age, into Texas
as colonists. This company, previously mentioned, to be known as the
Franco-Texienne Company, was to station its colonists at twenty forts to be erected
and maintained by it for twenty years along the western frontier, and to enjoy
exclusive trading privileges with the New Mexican settlements; its settlers
were to be exempt of all taxes and tariffs for a period of twenty years. When
the required number of settlers had been introduced and located at these
forts, the company was to receive three million acres of land, to be divided
into sixteen tracts scattered along the frontier. The eastern boundary of the
proposed grant was substantially the line of frontier posts which had been
suggested by Johnston, in 1839, "while the tract as a whole covered a strip of
territory varying from twenty to one hundred miles in width from east to
west."[1] The bill contained a number
of objectionable features[2] and failed to
pass the Senate,